An object of obsessive, usually exaggerated fear or anxiety: "Boredom, laziness and failure . . . These bugaboos, magnified by imagination, keep [the workaholic] running"(Dun's Review).
A recurring or persistent problem: "the bugaboos that have plagued vision systems: high price and slow throughput"(Lawrence A. Goshorn).
1740, probably an alteration of bugbear (see bug), but connected by Chapman with Bugibu, demon in the O.Fr. poem "Aliscans" from 1141, which is perhaps of Celtic origin (cf. Cornish bucca-boo, from bucca "bogle, goblin").
[buhg-uh-boo] 
əˌbu